A customer self-help system is a system that supports or accompanies one or more other data management systems by helping users of the one or more other data management systems find answers to their questions, without involving live customer support personnel. If a customer self-help system adequately helps a user find a satisfactory answer to the user's question, the user is less likely to seek additional support from live customer support (e.g., telephone support, live chat, text message, etc.). A business benefit of a well-functioning customer self-help system is reduced overhead costs for a company because providing live customer support can be expensive (e.g., sometimes costing the company as much as $25 per use of the live customer support). A user benefit of a well-functioning customer self-help system is that users can find answers to their questions more quickly than having to wait for live customer support because use of live customer support usually involves waiting in a queue for a turn to communicate with a customer support representative.
The quality of a customer self-help system is determined, at least in part, by how well the customer self-help system assists users in finding the customer support content for which the users are searching. To assist users in finding customer support content, traditional customer self-help systems typically apply a one-size-fits-all approach to the content search user experience that is provided to the users of the customer self-help system.
However, this traditional one-size-fits-all approach is problematic because it does not satisfy the searching needs or capabilities of users who have different levels of ability to formulate search queries. In other words, some users are very comfortable using advanced search features to formulate and submit a search query in a customer self-help system, while other users experience stress or confusion when presented with advanced search features to formulate a search query. If all users, including both advanced users and less experienced users are provided with the same content search user experience, neither category or type of user is likely to be satisfied with their search experience within the customer self-help system. For example, if an advanced user is provided with fewer content search user experience options and only a simplified content search user experience, it may take the advanced user more searches to find the results that the advanced user is searching for. Having to perform multiple searches and unnecessarily wasting time performing multiple searches, when a single search might do, can lead to a frustrated advanced user. If a less-experienced (e.g., normal) user is provided with an advanced content search user experience, the less-experienced user might be intimidated by the advanced content search user experience options and default towards seeking live customer support. If the less-experienced user attempts to use the advanced features and repeatedly fails to find the customer support content that the user is searching for, the less-experienced user may become dissatisfied with the search experience and incorrectly determine that the customer self-help system is incapable of satisfying the user's needs. Whenever a user of any type is dissatisfied, determines that the customer self-help system is inadequate, or seeks live customer support, the service provider of the customer self-help system is unlikely to gain or maintain that user's trust, confidence, and future business.
Consequently, a technical problem that exists for customer self-help systems is content search user experience to provide a customer self-help system that provides satisfying search experiences for the entire spectrum of users when servicing a customer base of varying levels of information searching skills.